Meetup’s new cell app is designed to make it simpler to satisfy individuals IRL

Should you’re like me, it is most likely been a scorching minute because you’ve used and even considered Meetup. Predating each Fb and Twitter, the web site, which was designed to assist individuals arrange in-person occasions, has modified fingers a handful of instances in recent times.

In 2017, founder Scott Heiferman offered it to WeWork, which offloaded it just a few years later earlier than declaring bankruptcy in 2023. As of 2024, Bending Spoons, the Italian tech firm that is most likely finest identified for getting Evernote in 2022, has been working Meetup.

Within the aftermath of the pandemic, the platform has seen one thing of resurgence. As of late 2025, Gen Z and younger Millennials make up 40 p.c of Meetup’s energetic person base and symbolize its most engaged group of customers. This 12 months, the app has additionally seen a 20 p.c year-over-year improve in new registrations. Going into 2026, Bending Spoons is hoping to construct on that momentum with a redesign of Meetup’s cell app.

The brand new interface, which begins rolling out in the present day, brings the Android and iOS app inline with Meetup’s not too long ago redesigned web site. Throughout the applying, customers can count on up to date fonts, new extra colourful icons and higher spacing. The aim of the redesign is to make the app “vibrant, enjoyable and extra fashionable than earlier than,” says Chiara Vivaldi, Meetup’s product lead. She provides the redesigned app retains all the important thing options discovered within the earlier model, whereas making these simpler to search out. As an illustration, customers can entry their profile and teams immediately from the homepage of the app.

Past making Meetup really feel extra fashionable, Bending Spoon is utilizing the redesign to cement the groundwork for a collection of enhancements it plans to roll out within the coming months.

In response to Vivaldi, one main precedence is to offer individuals, significantly ladies, extra confidence to attend the occasions which can be listed on Meetup. Once you navigate to an occasion web page within the new app, you will see a broad gender and age breakdown of the customers who’ve signed as much as be there. Moreover, new and richer person profiles enable individuals to get a greater sense of who precisely they could meet in the event that they determine to go. Bending Spoons can also be introducing a brand new Tremendous Organizer badge it plans to award to the platform’s high occasion planners. It is designed to sign to customers that the one that put collectively the occasion takes group constructing significantly.

Taken collectively, Vivaldi says these options are designed to cut back the friction of attending occasions the place you may not know anybody, they usually’re one thing the corporate plans to construct on sooner or later.

On the identical time, Bending Spoons plans to make it simpler for organizers to make use of Meetup. Beginning early subsequent 12 months, the corporate will unify Meetup’s two disparate apps — proper now, the corporate maintains separate ones for members and organizers. Vivaldi says organizers can count on the unified app to incorporate all the options they rely upon, alongside a handful of enhancements. As an illustration, Vivaldi’s staff is working to make QR-based ticketing the norm for check-ins and attendance monitoring. She says the transfer to a single app is knowledgeable by the truth that 75 p.c of Meetup’s organizers acquired their begin as a member.

“[Organizers] are a part of the group. They need to be within the motion, and so having them inside the identical app is conducive to that. They’ll leap into conversations, take a look at different occasions, making all of it really feel a bit extra natural,” Vivaldi stated. Within the meantime, if it’s been because you’ve used Meetup, you possibly can obtain the redesigned app from the App and Google Play shops.